We are rapidly nearing her south pole." "After doubling her north pole!" cried Ardan; "why, we must be circumnavigating her!" "Exactly; sailing all around her." "Hurrah! Then we're all right at last! There's nothing more to fear from your hyperbolas or parabolas or any other of your open curves!" "Nothing more, certainly, from an open curve, but every thing from a closed one." "A closed curve! What is it called?
And what is the trouble ?" "An eclipse it is called; and the trouble is that, instead of flying off into the boundless regions of space, our Projectile will probably describe an elliptical orbit around the Moon--" -- "What!" cried M'Nicholl, in amazement, "and be her satellite for ever!" "All right and proper," said Ardan; "why shouldn't she have one of her own ?" "Only, my dear friend," said Barbican to Ardan, "this change of curve involves no change in the doom of the Projectile.

We are as infallibly lost by an ellipse as by a parabola." "Well, there was one thing I never could reconcile myself to in the whole arrangement," replied Ardan cheerfully; "and that was destruction by an open curve.

Safe from that, I could say, 'Fate, do your worst!' Besides, I don't believe in the infallibility of your ellipsic.

It may prove just as unreliable as the hyperbola.

And it is no harm to hope that it may!" From present appearances there was very little to justify Ardan's hope.
Barbican's theory of the elliptic orbit was unfortunately too well grounded to allow a single reasonable doubt to be expressed regarding the Projectile's fate.